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Inside Facebook

Timeline coming soon for businesses

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 03:56 PM PST

Facebook plans to convert business pages to the new Timeline format as early as the end of February when the company will host an invitation-only marketing conference in New York City, according to AdAge.

Marketers have been dreaming up ways to use Timeline for businesses since the new profile debuted at f8, but Timeline hasn't been an option for brands because the social network requires companies use pages instead of profiles.

Timeline could be a significant improvement for pages, which users typically visit once to Like but they rarely return or spend much time on them. Giving brands more control over their presence on the social network is important for Facebook to maintain an advantage over Twitter and Google+. The change, however, could affect page tab apps, in which some companies have heavily invested over the past few years.

Page owners can look forward to a new design that allows for more branding with a cover photo and the option to resize posts. On the current pages, posts get easily lost, but with the Timeline algorithm, more important posts are surfaced when a user scrolls. Users can more easily find content that was shared weeks or even years ago. With an update to Facebook pages, businesses might also gain the ability to make posts to the past, as users now can with Timeline to share their history. A car company, for instance, might share photos of old models or a drink company might post vintage commercials.

A big question remains: what will happen to tab applications? Many pages — from top global brands to small local businesses — have invested in iFrame apps to welcome users to their pages or provide additional experiences. The company has frequently changed the size of tabs, forcing developers to redesign their apps, and it could do so again.

We also wonder whether Facebook's mobile product will begin to support page apps, particularly if the company plans to bring Sponsored Story ads to mobile devices soon. Most advertisers will want a custom landing page if they are running a campaign, but perhaps a unique cover photo will satisfy that need.

The last time Facebook redesigned profile pages in December 2010, business pages got a matching update in February. "We hope to make pages more consistent with Timeline in the future, but we have nothing further to share at this time," a Facebook spokesperson says.

New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: GREE, SocialPoint, SponsorPay and more

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 PM PST

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at GREE International, Inc., Social Point, SponsorPay, Addmired, King.com, Atari, TinyCo, Spooky Cool Labs, Identified, XMG Studio, FashionPlaytes, Inc., Stealth Mobile Startup, Plumbee, Mobile Deluxe,  Game Show Network and PlayMesh.

Stealth Mobile Startup

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Open Graph launch partners see early success with Timeline apps

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 11:51 AM PST

A number of sites and applications, including Pinterest, Foodspotting and Rockmelt, experienced significant increases in referral traffic and activity in the month since launching Timeline apps, according to a blog post by Facebook.

The latest metrics reveal that Open Graph integrations can help companies bring users to their own properties. In the past, developers and marketers often felt forced to build applications within Facebook tabs or canvas environments, sacrificing traffic to their existing sites. Facebook seems to be making a point of letting these stakeholders know that Open Graph is not about bringing the entire web onto Facebook, but integrating Facebook across the web and mobile and letting more companies reap the benefits.

According to the blog post, the number of Facebook users visiting virtual pinboard site Pinterest every day increased by more than 60 percent since they integrated with Timeline in January. Fashion photo app Pose has seen more than five times the amount of daily web sign-ups. Recipe site Foodily had a 4x increase in new users. Foodspotting, a food finding and sharing app, has seen three times the number of visits and activities shared.

Shopping site and mobile app Fab.com had a 50 percent increase in traffic from Facebook. Social web browser Rockmelt gained 20 percent more traffic and new users to the site since adding Open Graph functionality to its social reading app. Art discovery site Artfinder experienced a 60 percent increase in time spent on the site by new visitors from Facebook.

The social network says it has approved hundreds of Open Graph actions since opening up the platform last month. Lexus, Vogue Paris, Votizen, Identified, Boxee, MetaCafe and Shopkick are a few of the companies that most recently launched Timeline apps. See our overview of apps from Facebook’s launch partners here.

Facebook opens up Open Graph targeting options

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 10:34 AM PST

Facebook changed its documentation sometime last week to allow advertisers to target any Open Graph actions, we discovered.

Facebook now allows Ads API partners to target users by action, even if the advertiser is not associated with the Open Graph app that created the action. Previously, anyone could target Facebook-created actions read, listen and watch, but only the developer who created a custom Open Graph verb (e.g. drink, visit or run) could target users who took that action.

This latest change to the Open Graph action targeting permissions gives advertisers more options to pinpoint consumers based on their activity on Facebook and with integrated apps. It also means developers do not have exclusivity over the verbs they create. Limiting who can target which actions is not ideal for the platform as a whole, as it could result in land-grab situations where developers try to claim verbs to maintain control over advertising. However, by opening this type of targeting to all advertisers, developers have a clear way to poach users of competing apps.

Facebook's "Action Specs Targeting" feature is not yet available from the self-serve ad tool. It is in beta for Ads API partners only, but the partners we've talked to say they haven't done much to test the new functionality. They say the documentation is confusing and the number of actions and users taking those actions is not yet at a scale worth targeting. TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell and AdParlor CEO and Cofounder Hussein Fazal publicly spoke to these issues during one of our Inside Social Apps panels last week.

Much of the future of this type of targeting depends on Ads API partners finding the best uses and requesting improvements. These companies have a very sophisticated understanding of targeting and optimization, and they work with high-spending clients. Their findings could help advance this aspect of Open Graph, but it seems these partners need need further support and incentive from Facebook to invest time and resources toward beta testing it. Making the documentation clearer and not changing it without notifying partners would be the first step.

New Action Spec Targeting Permissions (emphasis ours):

Anybody can target any action, either built-in actions or custom actions, for any app. The currently available built in actions are og:news.reads, og:music.listens and og:video.watches. For example anybody can target the og:music.listens actions created by any application.

Old Action Spec Targeting Permissions (emphasis ours):

Anybody can target built-in actions for any app. For example anybody can target the og:music.listen actions created by any application. Only app developers or advertisers can target custom actions for their app. For example, if you create a "drove" action for your app only you can target users or friends of users who performed this action.

Spotify, Yahoo, Pinterest, games, cards, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by DAU

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 08:52 AM PST

Spotify topped our list of applications growing by daily active users this week. Other popular apps included Open Graph integrations from Pinterest, Yahoo, Grooveshark and Bing. Then there were games, cards, horoscopes, friend quizzes and a tab app.

The titles below grew between 180,000 and 1.7 million DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name DAU Gain Gain,%
1.   Spotify 5,300,000 +1,700,000 + 47%
2.   Greeting Cards 1,400,000 +1,360,000 + 3,400%
3.   Yahoo! Pages 570,000 +560,000 + 5,600%
4.   Yahoo! 2,100,000 +500,000 + 31%
5.   Pinterest 2,200,000 +400,000 + 22%
6.   Grooveshark 420,000 +310,000 + 282%
7.   Bing 3,800,000 +300,000 + 9%
8.   Words With Friends 8,900,000 +300,000 + 3%
9.   Birthday Cards 360,000 +240,000 + 200%
10.   21 questions 790,000 +200,000 + 34%
11.   Between You and Me 400,000 +200,000 + 100%
12.   Bubble Witch Saga 4,900,000 +200,000 + 4%
13.   Daily Horoscope 5,000,000 +200,000 + 4%
14.   Diamond Dash 4,200,000 +200,000 + 8%
15.   MyCalendar – Birthdays 2,300,000 +200,000 + 10%
16.   schoolFeed 1,900,000 +200,000 + 12%
17.   Scramble with Friends 1,800,000 +200,000 + 13%
18.   Static Iframe Tab 2,000,000 +200,000 + 18%
19.   Texas HoldEm Poker 6,900,000 +200,000 + 1%
20.   Ninja Saga 740,000 +180,000 + 32%

Spotify grew by more than 1 million DAU; the app generates feed and Ticker stories every time it's used. Other Open Graph apps that automatically generate stories included: Yahoo, Pinterest, Grooveshark and Bing.

The greeting card applications on the list all work similarly: the apps offer users the chance to be reminded of friends' birthdays or a personalized calendar of birthdays. Daily Horoscope offers users a daily post, offers a pop-up of reminders for users' friends birthdays, and then asks users to share the app with friends.

21 questions and Between You and Me are quiz apps that generate feed and ticker stories. Finally there was schoolFeed, which creates an interface on Facebook that highlights high school friends. Games that made the list ranged from Words With Friends and Bubble Witch Saga to Texas HoldEm Poker and Ninja Saga.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

torsdag den 16. februar 2012 at 07.55